Lawson ends Brown's lengthy political career

TALLAHASSEE — After nearly a quarter century in Congress, Jacksonville Democrat Corrine Brown was defeated Tuesday night after running a primary campaign in the shadow of a 24-count corruption indictment.

Brown was defeated by former state Sen. Al Lawson, a Tallahassee Democrat who made enough inroads in Brown's Jacksonville base to win by a comfortable 47-39 margin.

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“We are bolstered by the groundswell of support underneath us thanks to this evening’s good news,” Lawson said in a statement after the win.

He defeated a Florida political icon. Under the ubiquitous brand “Corrine Delivers,” Brown had spent years in Washington bringing home hundreds of millions of dollars in appropriations for her 5th Congressional District, which until recently snaked from Jacksonville to Orlando.

Brown’s calling card was “pork.” She often bragged on the stump about her ability to return taxpayer dollars to her district, and that deft touch allowed her to build a coalition with Jacksonville’s powerful Republicans. As a result, Brown rarely had real political challenges.

That changed, though, after the feds unsealed a 24-count indictment alleging Brown and her chief of staff used the power of their positions to solicit $800,000 in contributions for a fraudulent education nonprofit.

The allegations were enough to derail Brown. Her numbers soured and her fundraising dried up. She ended the campaign with less than $25,000 cash on hand, an astonishingly low number for a 12-term member of Congress.

But she did not go without a fight.

Most notably, she fought changes to her district. Under a redistricting legal challenge, Brown’s district was redrawn from Jacksonville west to the Tallahassee region. That move dropped its black voting age population by 5 percent, which Brown said violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. A federal court disagreed.

That new district landed her in a fight with a well-known Tallahassee politico, a fight she could not win. Her campaign did not issue a statement after the race was called.